Saturation throughput analysis of IEEE 802.11ad wireless LAN in the contention based access period(CBAP)

Abstract

The IEEE 802.11ad millimeter wave (mmWave) wireless LAN (WLAN) standard specifies the use of a hybrid MAC protocol consisting of CSMA/CA during the contention based access periods (CBAPs) and TDMA during the service periods (SPs). To mitigate the effects of higher attenuation in the mmWave band, the standard advocates the use of directional antennas. To provide channel access during CBAP, the coverage area around the AP can be divided into several quasi omni (QO) levels. In this paper, our focus is on uplink channel access during CBAP in which every multi-gigabit station (DMG STA) under a QO level contend for channel access using CSMA/CA protocol. We develop an accurate analytical model to compute the saturation throughput of each QO level and that of the network in the CBAP, by closely following the 802.11ad MAC specifications. We demonstrate the effectiveness of directional communication in 802.11ad WLANs.